Sacred Mission Research Articles

„Święta misja profesora Abronsiusa”. Fantazmaty, abiektalność i transgresje w filmie Romana Polańskiego "Nieustraszeni pogromcy wampirów"

“The Sacred Mission of Professor Abronsius:” Phantasms, The Abject, and Transgression in Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers is usually approached in film and cultural studies from a genological perspective: as a game with the convention and genres, a work that has the features of parody and pastiche, yet complies with the poetics of horror. When interpreting and analyzing the picture, it seems worthwhile to employ phantasmatic criticism drawing on the psychoanalytic theory of culture and consider the issue of the abject and transgressive nature of vampiric heroes. This leads to the exegesis of the film from a poststructuralist perspective with a focus on the existential and sexual aspects of vampirism, a topos analyzed by Maria Janion in terms of being a bloodsucker in the face of death, in the face of sex, and in the face of the tragic human condition. The ontic status of the beast seems to be particularly noteworthy if you consider its evolutionary aspect and the role that Polanski’s film played in this regard.

Mission and teacher identity: a case for relationships

Eight Catholic school communities across Australia nominated teacher identity characteristics aligned with an understanding of Catholic school mission from a local community perspective. A data mining process (Leximancer Manual in https://www.leximancer.com. Version 2.23, 2017) of the collated narratives from focus groups (n = 73) highlighted the mission concept, ‘School’, with a frequency of 295 appearances. An interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) of the concept revealed characteristics of tradition, integration and participation and characterised their essence as ‘a shared sacred mission’. Participant utterances that referenced teacher characteristics and frequencies within the narrative focused on: Community (38), Faith (13), and Life (9). Community utterances identified teacher ‘connections with students’, ‘staff relationships’, ‘associations with the broader community’ and ‘involvement in the life of the school’. Faith was expressed in teacher ‘leadership’, ‘Gospel values’, ‘spiritual growth’, ‘experience of church and connection with the charism of the Religious Institute.’ Life involved teachers advancing student ‘welfare’, ‘service’, ‘tradition’ and ‘advocacy’. Overall, teacher identity characteristics integral to mission were discussed as Relational Agency, Equity and Authenticity. Relational Agency entailed facilitation of student capabilities; Relational Equity enacted social justice values of inclusion and respect; and Relational Authenticity advanced and witnessed a foundational meaning system aligned with Catholic school tradition. The implications of the findings identified a case for relationships as being pertinent to mission for all teachers in Catholic schools, but teachers of Religious Education in particular.

A Chinese Philosophical Foundation for the Sacred Mission of Nurses: The Ways of Heaven and Life are Correlated

Clinical nursing practice uses professional nursing techniques, empathy, and moral judgment to help relieve the pain of patients who are suffering physically or mentally from trauma or illness. Thus, nursing involves sacred tasks. According to Confucian reasoning, morality is expressed through everyday actions. Providing care to patients arouses concern and sympathy in the caregiver, which induces him or her to fully apply professional knowledge to this task. This conduct demonstrates the moral conscience of nurses. The Chinese adage "Tian-tao hsing-ming hsiang kuan tung" (the way of heaven and life are correlated), attributed to Northern Song dynasty scholar Zhang Tsai, aptly explains the sacred mission of the nursing profession. Zhang held that all humans are born with a conscience that is given by heaven. However, human senses and desires may suppress this conscience. As Zhang Tsai suggested, the conscience must be cultivated in order to be manifested. The increase in recent years of international academic discussion / research related to the value and meaning of nursing and of exploration into how to promote the moral competence of nurses, not only provide support to Zhang's argument that "tian-tao" and "hsing-ming" are correlated but also provide positive momentum toward enhancing the self-worth of nurses and enabling patients to receive better care.

The University's Sacred Mission

Abstract William Rainey Harper, president of the University of Chicago from 1891 to 1906, declared that “the university is the Messiah of the democracy, its to-be-expected deliverer.” The university has not always adopted that sacred charge willingly or effectively. We need to cut to the quick and demonstrate that democracy cannot survive without informed and engaged citizens. The university should and can deliver those citizens to our society while, at the same time, preparing them for careers and professions—or risk the erosion of our precious legacy.

The University's Sacred Mission

Abstract William Rainey Harper, president of the University of Chicago from 1891 to 1906, declared that “the university is the Messiah of the democracy, its to-be-expected deliverer.” The university has not always adopted that sacred charge willingly or effectively. We need to cut to the quick and demonstrate that democracy cannot survive without informed and engaged citizens. The university should and can deliver those citizens to our society while, at the same time, preparing them for careers and professions—or risk the erosion of our precious legacy.

A Universal Sacred Mission and the Universal Secular Organization: The Holy See and the United Nations

Today, the Holy See has formal diplomatic relations with almost all states around the globe as well as with the United Nations (UN), where it holds the curious position of a Permanent Observer. Representing a universal sacred mission, the Holy See views the UN as one of the most important avenues in international relations for pursuing its aims. Vatican diplomats have thus been at the forefront of lobbying for human dignity at the UN in various conferences and popes have even directly addressed the UN's General Assembly. In examining relations between the Holy See and the UN, at least two issues are obvious and of primary importance. First, both institutions share a universal approach – the latter to represent all states of the world and the Holy See to represent all Catholics. Furthermore, both preach to their constituencies that they represent a universal idealist mission – to pursue peace and work towards the universalization of human rights. Second, the Holy See enjoys a Permanent Observer status within the UN and also a seemingly privileged status among all other religious communities. By adopting short studies of the Holy See's interventions in three dimensions of human rights advocacy at the UN, along with its supplement of the UN's mission in correcting capitalist development, the article concludes that the Catholic religion has returned in a role that reaffirms the possibilities of enhancing society on a globalist scale rather than merely reinforcing an international society of sovereign states.

Sacred mission, worldly ambition: Black Christian Nationalism in the age of Jim Crow

Using Savannah, Georgia, as a case study, Sacred Mission, Worldly Ambition tells the story of the rise and decline of Black Christian Nationalism. This nationalism emerged from the experiences of segregation, as an intersection between the sacred world of religion and church and the secular world of business. The premise of Black Christian Nationalism was a belief in a dual understanding of redemption, at the same time earthly and otherworldly, and the conviction that black Christians, once delivered from psychic, spiritual, and material want, would release all of America from the suffering that prevented it from achieving its noble ideals. The study's use of local sources in Savannah, especially behind-the-scenes church records, provides a rare glimpse into church life and ritual, depicting scenes never before described. Blending history, ethnography, and Geertzian dramaturgy, it traces the evolution of black southern society from a communitarian, nationalist system of hierarchy, patriarchy, and interclass fellowship to an individualistic one that accompanied the appearance of a new black civil society. Although not a study of the civil rights movement, Sacred Mission, Worldly Ambition advances a bold, revisionist interpretation of black religion at the eve of the movement. It shows that the institutional primacy of the churches had to give way to a more diversified secular sphere before an overtly politicized struggle for freedom could take place. The unambiguously political movement of the 1950s and 1960s that drew on black Christianity and radiated from many black churches was possible only when the churches came to exert less control over members' quotidian lives. A Sarah Mills Hodge Fund Publication.

"A Blessing to People": Dorsey Dixon and His Sacred Mission of Song

A Blessing to People" Dorsey Dixon and His Sacred Mission of Song Patrick Huber I'm trying to serve the Lord in my weak way and trying to be a blessing to people, is what I been trying to do. In fact, I've tried to live right all my life, but, you know, we're not going into the story about my life because I don't want that mentioned. I don't want nothing about my life wrote out, because I had it too rough in life. —Dorsey Dixon, on a ca. 1961 homemade recording Carolina Piedmont singer and songwriter Dorsey Dixon was never supposed to live. At his birth in 1897, in Darlington, South Carolina, he was a puny, oxygen-starved baby weighing only three pounds. "I heard [my parents] tell friends and neighbors many times that I was a blue baby. Which I did not understand," Dixon explained in one of his autobiographical writings. "But I have learned that such babies requared the greatest of care by doctors and nerses. and was right up next to imposible to keep one of them from slipping out from the living. But a great unknown Power kept me. and I made it." Dixon's pious Christian parents interpreted his near-miraculous survival as a sign that God had spared him for what they frequently referred to as "a great purpose." Throughout most of his life, however, gnawing doubts about his success in carrying out his divinely ordained mission tormented him. "I do not know if I have full filled the purpose that mother and father said I was left here for or not," Dixon confessed in a memoir written when he was fifty years old. "But I do know that I have had a real tough time in life." 1 For more than thirty-five years Dixon struggled to earn a living in the textile mills of the Carolina Piedmont, but by calling he was a guitarist, singer, and songwriter who came to believe that his special mission in life was to spread the gospel through music. A devout Free-Will Baptist and regular churchgoer, Dixon transformed accounts of small-town tragedies and national disasters into songs and poems about the wages of sin, the unknown hour of death, and the promise of eternal salvation. "Wreck on the Highway," which WSM's Grand Ole Opry star Roy Acuff turned into a national hit in 1942, remains Dixon's most famous composition, but many of his other songs similarly recount tragic events—millpond drownings, train wrecks, schoolhouse fires, ship sinkings, and other calamities. [End Page 111] Such misfortunes became, in Dixon's hands, moral parables about God's wrath and the self-destructive sins of human pride and godlessness, and, as jeremiads intended to generate spiritual renewal, his songs of tragedy usually concluded with somber warnings to sinners to repent of their wickedness and lead righteous Christian lives in anticipation of heavenly rewards. Perhaps such dreadful incidents resonated with him in part because, as he made clear in his late-life interviews and two unpublished autobiographical writings, hardship and suffering deeply scarred his own life. But Dixon's religious faith and his belief in his "great purpose" sustained him throughout fragile health, bouts with chronic depression, unstable personal relationships, intense pangs of self-doubt, and—despite modest songwriting success—lifelong poverty. In many ways his ongoing financial and health problems seemed only to strengthen his abiding faith. "And friends," he once wrote, "I know that the Great Power of God help[ed] me to win in every battle that I fought to stay in the world." 2 Click for larger view Figure 1 Throughout his musical career, Dorsey Dixon (here) turned stories of tragedy and disaster into religious parables of sin and redemption. Photograph courtesy of Wilson Library's Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Beginning in 1929, Dorsey Dixon composed or arranged more than 130 sacred [End Page...

Book Review: History of the Society of the Sacred Mission

Book Review: History of the Society of the Sacred Mission

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: A Global Ethic The Declaration of the Parliament of the World's Religions, Hans Küng and Karl‐Josef Kuschel (eds) Evangelization and Culture, Aylward Shorter, Geoffrey Chapman Revelation: Vision of a Just World, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, T. & T. Clark The Convert Cardinals: John Henry Newman and Henry Edward Manning, David Newsome, John Murray The Model of Love: A Study in Philosophical Theology, Vincent Brümmer Saint Paul at the Movies: The Apostle's Dialogue with American Culture, Robert Jewett, Westminister/John Knox A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering, Emilie M. Townes (ed.) Critical Caring: A Feminist Model for Pastoral Psychology, Valerie M. DeMarinis, Westminster/John Knox Life Cycles: Women and Pastoral Care, Elaine Graham and Margaret Halsey (eds) Religions in the UK: A Multi‐Faith Directory, Paul Weller (ed), researched by Rachelle Castle and Paul Weller Church People in the Struggle: The National Council of Churches and the Black Freedom Movement 1950–1970, James F. Findlav Jr. Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin, B. A. Gerrish, T. & T. Clark Worship, Adoration and Action, D.A. Carson (ed.)Explorations in Science and Theology. The Templeton Lectures at the RSA,Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology, William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, Science and Christian Belief: Theological Reflections on a Bottom‐up Thinker, John Polkinghorne Theology for a Scientific Age (enlarged edition), Arthur Peacocke The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son, Jon D. Levenson Jung and the Monotheisms, Joel Ryce‐Menuhin SSM: History of the Society of the Sacred Mission, Alistair Mason How to Understand the Virgin Mary, Jacques Bur

Liturgy and Society. The Function of the Church in the Modern World. By A. G. Hebert, of the Society of the Sacred Mission, Kelham. (Faber & Faber; 12/6.)

Liturgy and Society. The Function of the Church in the Modern World. By A. G. Hebert, of the Society of the Sacred Mission, Kelham. (Faber & Faber; 12/6.)

The Church and the Catholic together with The Spirit of the Liturgy. By Romano Guardini. Translated by Ada Lane. (Sheed & Ward; 5/-.) - The Spirit and the Bride. By Dom Anscar VonierO.S.B. Burns Oates; 6/-.)

Book reviewed in this article:The Church and the Catholic together with The Spirit of the Liturgy. By Romano Guardini. Translated by Ada Lane. (Sheed & Ward; 5/‐.)The Spirit and the Bride. By Dom Anscar Vonier, O.S.B. Bums Oates; 6/‐.)Liturgy and Society. The Function of the Church in the Modem World. By A. G. Hebert, of the Society of the Sacred Mission, Kelham. (Faber & Faber; 12/6.)Values and Reality. By Leo Ward, C.S.C. (Sheed & Ward; 7/6.)Lettre sur L'Independence. By Jacques Maritain. (Desclke de Brouwer; 5 frs.)